Here at Practice-Web, we value our customers, really! You’re the reason behind our success. Thank You! Because we value the health of your practice, this month’s article is going to hit home for a lot of our customers. It is important to us that your software operates properly and that you have access to your data anytime your business doors are open. You’re probably asking “Okay, what’s the catch?” Here it is. Do you back up and restore your data each business day? This is the most important task you can ever do in your practice.
For every new Practice-Web customer, we cover the backup and restore process in the introductory training. We try to stress this end-of-day task as much as possible to all of our valued customers. Why are we so adamant about the backup/restore process? Let me ask you this, how would you feel if you came into the office and your old Windows XP machine that you refuse to upgrade has finally died? Now you have to replace it. If you don’t have a valid back up then all of your patient information has died with that old machine. However, If you have a valid back up then all you have to do is call Practice-Web support. We can re-install Practice-Web on your new computer and restore your data with very minimal interruption to your office and all your data is intact on your new machine. Your hardware doesn’t have to be old to fail. It can fail due to power outages, viruses, and many other causes. I have seen computers only a month old crash before. Poof! It can be devastating when that happens because it’s never expected.
We do have customers that have the best intentions. They have their IT professional set them up with an automated backup system. That’s great! Do you verify the quality of the backup regularly? It doesn’t matter what type of automated backup system you have in place if there is a hiccup in the connection during the backup process then that is a bad backup for that night. Here’s a scenario: A doctor understood our instructions on the importance of backing up. His IT professional set him up with an automated backup to an external hard drive. The doctor’s office had a complete system crash because of a virus they picked up and they needed to re-install. The doctor was current on support so we were happy to help. We re-installed a new Practice-Web application on his computer and asked the doctor for his backup. He obliged and plugged the external hard drive into his new machine. At some point during the year, there was a power failure that affected his external hard drive. The last valid backup available was from 6 months ago. All new patients, all appointments, everything from the last six months, gone. If the doctor restored his backup nightly to his home computer as instructed he could have caught on to the external hard drive issue much sooner and avoided this headache completely. Even if you are backing up to Carbonite or some other online service call them and ask them about the restore process and restore nightly to your home computer.
To help you understand how simple it is to back up and restore your data, we created a video tutorial for you. You can click here to watch it…
Don’t let this article make you afraid to go paperless. Paper charts are not a secure or efficient way to retrieve information. You can be paperless with confidence if you follow our advice and back up nightly and verify its quality by restoring it to your home computer. This extremely simple process is the most important thing you can do for the health of your practice. If you would like more information please call support at 800-845-9379 Opt 2 and we will be happy to help 🙂